Colorado has been spared a large hit in the first round of firings by Danish wind-turbine-maker Vestas Wind Systems, but large job cuts loom later this year.

Vestas announced Thursday that 2,335 workers would be fired, with the bulk of the cuts in Europe and China.

In the U.S., 182 jobs in "support positions" will be cut. Vestas also has research and office facilities in Portland, Ore., and Houston.

The cuts are being made to save $191 million as the company — the world's largest wind-turbine maker — failed to meet sales targets.

There could, however, be a cut of 1,600 jobs in the U.S. later this year if a production tax credit is not renewed by Congress, Ditlev Engle, Vestas' chief executive, said at a news conference Thursday in Copenhagen.

The tax credit is set to expire at the end of the year.

Not renewing the tax credit, which is attached to the electricity generated from wind farms, would be "a harsh blow for our production units in the United States," Engle said.

Vestas has spent about $1 billion on four manufacturing plants in Windsor, Brighton and Pueblo and an engineering facility in Lafayette.

It employs about 1,700 people in Colorado.

"The loss of those jobs would be a significant blow to Colorado," said former Gov. Bill Ritter, who worked to bring the plants here.

The impact of the layoffs would extend well beyond Vestas' gates, said Eric Berglund, interim president of Upstate Colorado Economic Development, a nonprofit development agency in Greeley.

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"Vestas has been a magnet for other companies — Vestas suppliers like Hexcel and Bach Composite," Berglund said. "Vestas is using the Great Western Railway to ship. There would be a lot of impacts."

Hexcel and Bach both built factories in Weld County to supply Vestas, and they employ more than 200 workers.

"Employment in the clean-tech sector has grown by 7 percent a year for the last six years," said Tom Clark, chief executive at the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

"That is the single largest contributor to Colorado having a unemployment rate lower than the national average, and Vestas is the largest employer in that crew," Clark said.

The production tax credit has been in place, with some gap years, since 1992 and is currently equal to about $22 dollars for every megawatt-hour a wind farm generates.

IHS has projected that the market demand for wind turbines would be a record 10.7 giga watts in 2013 with the tax credit — without the tax credit it would drop to 1.5 gigawatts.

"The loss of the production tax credit would pull the rug out from under the entire wind industry, not just Vestas," DaPrato said.

The battle in Congress over energy incentives is a recurring one, said Ritter, who is now director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University.

During his administration, Congress tried to do away with an oil and gas tax credit, Ritter said. "We worked with our congressional delegation to get that extended," he said.

"We have tax credits for every form of energy production," Ritter said. "The wind-energy industry is bringing down costs and in a few years won't need the tax credit, but for now — and in this economy — it should be extended."

While Vestas failed to meet its sales targets for 2011, its North American division had its second-highest sales year, with 812 turbines sold to 14 U.S. and Canadian customers.

To lure Vestas to Colorado, state and local governments provide an array of incentives.

The Vestas Windsor factory received about a $4 million incentive package from state and local agencies, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report.

The package includes grants, tax rebates and job-training funds.

Weld County provided a $792,000 personal-property- tax rebate over 10 years, according to county-commission meeting minutes.

The two Brighton facilities — a blade factory and a plant for building wind turbines — and the Pueblo tower plant received bundled incentives totaling about $2.5 million.

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